What Price What Glory?

The decathlon made Jim Thorpe the most famous American Indian since Sitting Bull. It won Glenn Morris a job playing Tarzan in the movies. It turned Bob Mathias, a 17-year-old high-schooler, into a national hero, and it earned a college education for a Negro lad named Rafer Johnson whose family were so poor that they lived in a boxcar on a railroad siding. The only thing the two-day, ten-event contest has done for California's Bill Toomey, 27, and Russ Hodge, 26, is run up their doctors' bills. Bill suffers from shin splints and heel spurs; Russ has bursitis in his elbow, tendinitis in his knee, and strained ligaments in his ankle.

Jacks & Masters. Practically nobody has even heard of Toomey and Hodge, although they are the two best decathlon men in history. A kind of track meet in miniature, the decathlon is the most searching test of athletic skill and endurance yet devised. But except in Olympic years when it becomes the symbol of the original Greek games, it arouses little passion in the U.S. There won't be another Olympics until 1968; and so in the meantime, Toomey and Hodge have been slogging along, paying their own way to the few track meets in which the decathlon is held, rarely getting a mention in the press. "We feel like tramps," says Toomey, a Santa Barbara, Calif., schoolteacher. "People look at us as jacks of all trades and masters of none."

Which hardly seems fair, since Toomey can broad-jump 25 ft. 6 in., run the 100-meter dash in 10.3 sec. (just .3 sec. off the world record), and Hodge, who still goes to college, can heave the 16-lb. shot 56 ft. 7 1/2 in. -- good enough by itself to coin an Olympic gold medal in 1948. Last month at the U.S. decathlon championships in Salina, Kans., Toomey scored 8,234 points under the complicated performance tables, and Hodge scored 8,130 to put both over the old world record of 8,089 set in 1963 by Nationalist China's C. K. Yang. Last week at the Los Angeles Times International Games, Russ reversed the decision, beating Bill by eleven points and coming within five points of breaking his world mark.

Best but Three. Between them, Toomey and Hodge have beaten Yang's best marks in all but three events. Toomey is strongest in the running events: he has pared .3 sec. off Yang's top time for the 100 meters, .9 sec. off his 400-meter mark, half a minute off his 1,500-meter time. Hodge is better in the field: he has put the shot 11 ft. 2 1/4 in. farther than Yang, hurled the discus 165 ft. 5 in. (v. Yang's 140 ft. 1 in.). Rooming together in a $110-a-month Santa Barbara apartment (Hodge does the cooking), the two also double as each other's coaches. "I help Russ with his running," says Toomey, "and he helps me with the weight events."

At Los Angeles last week, the two friends staged a furious duel that for drama even overshadowed two world record performances -- a 17-ft. 6 1/4-in. pole vault by John Fennel, and a 2-min. 59.6 sec. clocking in the 1,600-meter relay. After nine grueling events, Russ Hodge led Bill Toomey by only 146 points, and Toomey struggled grimly through the 1,500-meter run knowing that he needed to beat Hodge by at least 21 sec. to get enough points to pull ahead. Breaking the tape, he collapsed exhausted on the infield grass and waited for Hodge to finish. Hodge staggered across the line 20.1 sec. behind Toomey, enough--by a bare second--to win.

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